


broken into a million pieces

by KeeperofSeeds



Series: femslashficlets - queer women’s lit [5]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bad Wolf, Bad Wolf Rose Tyler, Bisexual Clara Oswin Oswald, Blanket Permission, Echoes of Clara Oswin Oswald, Episode: s07e14 The Name of the Doctor, Experimental Style, F/F, Inspired By Tumblr, Mild Sexual Content, Podfic Welcome, Roses, The Doctor & Clara Oswin Oswald Friendship, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:41:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27910918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeeperofSeeds/pseuds/KeeperofSeeds
Summary: The Impossible Girl runs to save the Doctor. The Bad Wolf runs alongside the same path.
Relationships: Clara Oswin Oswald/Rose Tyler, The Doctor & Clara Oswin Oswald
Series: femslashficlets - queer women’s lit [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1596880
Kudos: 4





	broken into a million pieces

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt 6 - Stand and face me, my love, and scatter the grace in your eyes. Sappho
> 
> “I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself. I scatter them in time and space.”  
> -  
> "I don’t know where I am. It’s like I’m breaking into a million pieces and there is only one thing I remember: I have to save the Doctor. He always looks different. I always know it’s him. Sometimes I think I’m everywhere at once, running every second just to find him. Just to save him. But he never hears me. Almost never. I blew into this world on a leaf. I’m still blowing. I don’t think I’ll ever land. I’m Clara Oswald. I’m the [ impossible girl](https://www.planetclaire.tv/quotes/doctorwho/series-seven/the-name-of-the-doctor/). I was born to save the Doctor."

She chases the Doctor through time and space. A step behind or a step ahead. Slipping into the shadows and through the trees and over the edge of adventure.

Clara tumbles down the path, a leaf on eddies of fate not knowing where she’ll end up next.. What she does know, is that she must keep moving. 

* * *

Someone else is there too. Another someone on the path, or perhaps alongside it. A river running parallel to her, and to the Doctor. 

She starts to see patterns. Like that someone is leaving clues along the way. Things to distract her she first thinks but then thinks they are helping her along. Pointing out the way, surrounding the thing she’s running towards. 

Roses bloom along the path, red and lush, and she follows where they lead. 

* * *

Even when she doesn’t realize it, the roses guide her. 

Even when she forgets herself, lost in the echo of an echo of herself, her guide does not falter. Markers twist and twirl around her lives, pulling her towards her goal. 

Her red jumper snags and she forgets the soufflé in the oven. 

She works late at the Crown and Rose, reveling in the bustle and noise, not knowing the Doctor will find her this time round. 

A single leaf floats and falls and twists and turns through time. 

Sometimes she thinks she hears her. Through different voices and ways, her guide makes herself known. Wolves howl in the darkness. "Protect him," a shopkeeper says in the middle of the day. "Faster" the breeze whispers. And Clara runs and runs and runs. She lives and dies, a dozen different times. Always she finds the Doctor. Always she hears the other. 

Another day. Another place. Another time where he doesn't hear her. Clara wakes in the inn with tears on her pillow. She rubs her hand along her cheek but it doesn't stop the flow. She closes her eyes and feels Time shudder around her. The bed dips behind her and she hurries to turn and face...a stranger. A woman lies in her bed and reaches over slowly to brush at the tear tracks on her face as if it were nothing. And suddenly Clara knows. This is the guide. The Other on the path she's been running. 

"Yes," she whispers into the dark and Clara's tears turn into relieved laughter. 

"You're here, you're really here."

Their hands find each other in the dark. 

"I saw you." her guide says. "I see everything. Every one of you running. Chasing him. Protecting him. Time and time again. You know what it's like to run at his side. You know what it's like to see Time and watch again and again as things change. I know it too." 

Their lips meet in the dark room and the kiss tastes like the salt of Clara's tears and the ocean itself and like relief of being Seen.

The night stretches and molds around them as they come together, kiss bruised lips and dark hair grasped between fingers and nails dug into flesh as they find their pleasure together. 

When Clara wakes in the morning, she is alone again. But as she leaves the inn she hears hears the wind whisper once more. "You're not alone," it says, and Clara takes heart at that. She anchors herself once more, and sets her feet on the well worn path. 

* * *

She sees her more often after. Glimpses in space and time. The woman with golden eyes and hair like the sun. The one posting clues along the way. Pieces of her and pieces of Clara scattered through time. Hands brushing but never grasping hold. Working side by side to save the Doctor. 

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of this fic is based on [this](https://doctorwho.tumblr.com/post/47750113217/clara-oswald-theory-bad-wolfrose-tyler-and-clara) rad tumblr post that suggests Rose and Clara are connected based on these points:
> 
> Bad Wolf was able to see all of time and space and mold it. (ep: Journey’s End)  
> Constant presence of roses around all three “versions” of Clara.  
> ‘The most important leaf in human history’ was from a Norway Maple. (ep: The Rings of Akhaten). Darlig Ulv Stranden (a.k.a. Bad Wolf Bay) is located in Norway (ep: Doomsday / Journey’s End)  
> On 5 March 2005, Rose Tyler first met the Doctor. (ep: Rose) 5 March 2005 is also the date when Clara’s mother died. (ep: The Rings of Akhaten).  
> Clara is always wearing red clothes (or something red, like her bag in The Rings of Akhaten). Red is the color of most common roses.  
> The TARDIS doesn’t seem to like Clara (ep: The Rings of Akhaten). This may be due to the fact that she is an anomaly of the Universe. The same thing happened with Jack Harkness, since Bad Wolf gave him immortality. The TARDIS tried to shake Jack off (ep: Utopia).


End file.
